


Haunt

by NOT_TOWA_WAKASA



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-25
Updated: 2019-08-25
Packaged: 2020-09-26 12:16:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20389576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NOT_TOWA_WAKASA/pseuds/NOT_TOWA_WAKASA
Summary: While Touko continues her mission in Towa City, Byakuya and the others at Future Foundation discuss something which turned out to be nothing.





	Haunt

Late one night, Touko sits at her desk hunched over a lamp-lit letter with a pencil in her hand. This will not be her final draft - that, she will write in ink - but words flow from her graphite tip with the confidence of an actress who’s a hundred-times repeated her lines behind closed lips. On the desk, cockroaches crawl and flutter like spots in the edges of her vision.

Occasionally, that vision doubles and blears, and her head suddenly feels like an anchor attached to her neck. Each time, she blinks, shakes her head from side to side, and continues.

Despite her exhaustion, Touko feels elated. In stark contrast to the dim, rancid dorm room that surrounds her, bubbly joy rises in her chest. When she writes the word 'you', knowing that Byakuya will read it and think 'me', his face appears in her mind in front of her. Immediately, she thinks of ten things she wishes for him to know.

It’s much like a fantasy playing out in her mind, but real, even if not quite yet. And though she can only guess at how he will react to anything she writes, that only means she has to put that much more effort into making sure her feelings get across.

Near the bottom of a page several turns later, Touko caps off the letter with a line she’d had sitting impatiently in her head since she had first began writing. As she writes it, she sighs, satisfied with herself. For a moment, as she leans back in her chair, her mind simply blanks.

When Touko catches herself, she sits upright and flips through the pages back to the beginning of her letter. Mindfully, she reads through it, jotting down notes in the margins on what she can condense and reword and crossing out what she wishes to remove. Once she reaches the end, she doubles back, rereads it again, before placing her hand on the notebook’s spine and tearing out the pages to set at her side. On fresh paper, she rewrites it, cleaner and shorter and more precise, before once more she tears out the pages and sets them again at her side.

Out from her desk drawer she pulls out a clean sheet of stationary and a fresh pen, the ink hurriedly tested with quick scribbles on the discarded pages. Her vision no longer wavers, and she carefully draws her pen across the stationary in quick, minute movements, rendering each character with delicate precision. Out of habit, she stills her breath to better focus, and with every line she draws back to gasp, before leaning back in to continue with the same dutiful effort.

Normally, in her professional work, Touko is fueled in equal parts by passion and practiced - learned - diligence. She knows it would have been impossible to finish any of her novels on inspiration alone, and when ‘passion’ cannot drive her forward, it is the hard worker that lies within her that caries on.

That skill is useful, but here, knowing exactly who it will be reading the words Touko writes, she hardly has to tap into that diligence at all. The thought of Byakuya reading is enough to keep her mind alight and her hand moving.

By the time Touko is completely, totally finished, hours have passed and the time is no longer quite ‘night’. One last time, she reads over her letter. Her heart flutters in her chest. Liberally, after plugging her own nose, she sprays the letter with perfume so that it does not carry the pungent smell of her room before sliding it into an envelope, which she again sprays.

Again, Touko leans back in her seat, staring at her letter.

Her head starts to fall forward.

Touko is almost too tired to stand, but she pushes herself up and drags her body to the bed. Within moments, she collapses, falling into a dreamless sleep.

* * *

“So… It didn’t turn out to be all that useful,” Byakuya hears Makoto say, which helpfully leads him to tune the rest of the conversation (which he has not been apart of) out, relegating it to background noise.

A month has passed since Byakuya was rescued from his capture in Towa City, and since then, things have returned to ‘normal’ within Future Foundation. Ironically, Touko’s absence as an official member of the project cannot yet be noticed, since she hadn’t been a part of Future Foundation upon leaving for the island city. The team’s meetings with her via webcam are a new addition to their schedule.

Things have changed in other ways - a few new faces in the workplace, a few faces missing. The Remants project has progressed in several areas since Byakuya's botched mission in Towa City, and they now have new leads to work with. But his old classmates from Hopes Peak are still here, acting as they always have.

Byakuya does not say as much, but after having been imprisoned and deprived for so long, being able to return to something which has come to feel so… familiar, to him, helped him regain his footing.

“I know I said earlier that this was a really cool find, but… it’s pretty morbid, isn’t it?” Aoi comments. “Most of this stuff belonged to people who aren’t… you know, around anymore?”

“… Yeah,” Makoto says.

There’s a long pause before Aoi speaks up again. “I mean… we have a contact list for everyone related to the academy. I’m sure there’s people who’ll appreciate us passing this along.”

“Oh, no way!” Yasuhiro cuts in. “This stuff is prime haunting real-estate! It just screams cursed!”

“Hagakure-kun…”

“It does not! Shut up!”

Byakuya rolls his eyes.

“We should at least be doing some low-level cleansings first. A bit of purifying salt and it’d be good to go,” Yasuhiro says. “’Course, we’d have to charge for that…”

A cache had been found. Personal items, belonging to dozens of students and teachers attending Hopes Peak leading up to the school’s closing had been stashed away, not destroyed or abandoned, presumably as the school was being cleared out for the killing game.

Why? Nobody knew. At the time of discovery, it was both a security risk - an obvious trap, or point of infiltration - and an opportunity. Possible clues to the whereabouts of the Remnants of Despair could have been lying within.

Several days of careful deliberation followed by a sorting effort later, and no such clues had been produced. All they had to show for their investigation were reminders of what once was. If Byakuya looked behind himself, he would see a table lined with boxes, each with a confirmed name marked across the side. Like time capsules, or coffins.

… Of course, not all of the items stored belonged to dead students.

Aoi had found an award she’d won in her first year of school at Hopes Peak, along with some studiously-filled notebooks full of notes and doodles of her classmates. Makoto found a t-shirt he caught from a shirt cannon at a sporting event. Yasuhiro found magazines which purportedly belonged to Leon. The list went on - for the most part being relatively worthless, assigned sentimental value by a period of time none of them could remember with particular clarity.

“So… what about this stuff?” Yasuhiro says, loudly rifling through one of boxes. “Should we send it off in the next supply drop? You know, like a care package!”

Byakuya glances over his shoulder.

“Hey, you shouldn’t be going through a girl’s stuff!” Aoi insists. “You know Fukawa-chan would be furious if she were here!”

“That’s why I’m doing it while she’s gone! It’s not like any of this is secret, anyway.”

Byakuya grimaces, and turns around. “Absolutely not. The supply drops aren’t for ‘care packages’.”

Yasuhiro shrieks. “Togami-chi! You’ve been here this entire time?!”

Byakuya narrows his eyes. “Imbecile.”

“You… are kind of hard to notice when you’re brooding like that,” Makoto says.

Byakuya turns up his nose. “I wasn’t brooding. I was abstaining.”

Aoi sighs. “Eh… he has a point, though. It’s not like Fukawa-chan could just lug this stuff around everywhere while she’s in Towa City.”

“Ooh… that’s true,” Yasuhiro says, and shrugs. “Well — hey, it looks like there was a mix up! This one has Togami-chi’s name on it!”

Byakuya blinks. “Excuse me?”

“I told you to stop going through her stuff!” Aoi shouts.

Makoto leans in to looks inside. “Hagakure-kun… that’s a letter.”

“Eh?” Yasuhiro does a double take. He holds up what he found, allowing the others to see - indeed, a sealed, plain white envelope, upon the upper half of which Byakuya’s name is written in ink. Yasuhiro scratches his head. “But… letters have addresses and stuff…”

Seething, Aoi snatches it out of his hand. “You don’t need an address for someone who lives in the same school as you!” She exclaims. “I put it in there with the rest of her stuff. Her handwriting is, like, super distinct, so I could tell immediately she wrote it…” She flips the letter over, glancing at the writing once more. “Plus, it was for Togami, so… obviously Fukawa-chan.”

A letter from Touko. Writing from before the tragedy. Though Byakuya’s memory of the time is not exact, it’s not a surprise at all that Touko had written something for him during their time together at school - rather, so easily, Byakuya can imagine the drivel that lies within.

Yasuhiro scratches his head again.

“I… see,” Makoto says. “Doesn’t that still make it Togami-kun’s, though? It was for him, after all.”

Aoi shakes her head. “It’s still unopened. That means she must have never sent it. Right?”

As they consider that, Aoi, Makoto, and Yasuhiro turn to Byakuya.

Makoto looks at him expectantly. Byakuya realizes he’s been silent.

“… You’ve stated your case, but there’s clearly a hole in your line of reasoning.”

Aoi tilts her head. “Huh?”

Byakuya pushes his glasses up the ridge of his nose. “You presume that because I did not open it, I must not have received it.”

Aoi’s brows furrow. “You mean… you got a letter from Fukawa-chan, and... you just ignored it?”

No, that’s not what happened. “Must I entertain every one of her idle thoughts?”

Byakuya earns a disgusted look in response. “Gosh, you’re such a jerk, Togami. I guess it’s not that hard to believe after all.”

Aoi looks down at the letter in her hands. The others look between her and Byakuya.

“So… what? Are you saying you want it back?” Aoi frowns. “… That doesn’t feel right.”

Byakuya thinks to open his mouth to respond, but his mind blanks.

He clenches his jaw. What had been the point in objecting?

When the pause that follows stretches on a second too long, Makoto steps in to answer. “It’s… probably for the best that Togami-kun keeps the letter. I mean, wouldn’t it hurt to have a letter you sent someone given back? It’s not exactly something Fukawa would be happy to find.”

As Aoi listens, she glances at Byakuya, seeming to consider whether she believes that’s what he had in mind. Judging by the look she has on her face when she speaks, that’s not the conclusion she came to. “… Right. I guess so…”

Begrudgingly, Aoi holds out the letter, and without reason, Byakuya takes it.

* * *

Later, that night, Byakuya sits at his bedside, turning the letter over in his hand. His thumb skirts along the envelope’s lip, applying just enough pressure to cause a sliver of paper to slide over his nail, but not enough to undo the wax seal.

It’s not hesitation. Byakuya has no reason to hesitate, so that couldn’t be the case.

Though Aoi was capable of identifying Touko’s handwriting at a glance, Byakuya realizes as he reads his name in her writing - over and over again, though idly - that this is the first time he’s paid it any amount of attention. What amount of her writing he has read - her novels, notably, and purely so that he might understand her skill as a writer - came in the form of print. Ironic.

But he agrees with Aoi. Her handwriting is quite distinct.

Without turning his head, Byakuya reaches for the nightstand drawer. Inside, he’s able to withdraw a small, double-sided knife. Paper hisses as the sharp edge is slowly drawn across the top of the envelope, rendering the letter now permanently ‘opened’.

Byakuya’s nose catches something oddly fragrant, though the scent passes before he can identify the exact smell.

What lies inside is not quite what he envisioned. What Byakuya expected, before unfolding the letter, was a rambling, flowery diatribe, assigning a laundry list of adverbs to the color of his eyes and to the texture of his hair, as if he were to be impressed by her adoration and the scope of her vocabulary alone.

Rather, what he’s met with is something deceptively biographical. Touko’s writing leads Byakuya through a recounting of events - moments, thoughts, conversations, revelations - and as he reads, he’s invited into her mind, appearing to him as a mindfully arranged and tended-to garden in its vividness.

Like a good novel, Byakuya imagines these scenes before him, and in the moment, he lives within them. To Touko, the prodigious writer, no word said is without meaning and purpose. The mundanity of everyday conversations and happenstance meetings are transformed into beats in a story, making up an emotional arc with it’s own finely paced dips and crescendos.

In short, it is indeed a gushy love letter. But Byakuya knows, logically, that every one of these interactions took place. The discussions in the library, the rare lunch spent in each other’s company, the class projects… Some of them, even, he can remember himself having happened.

But as the letter ends, and he is thrust out from the world within and back into his dingy apartment, Byakuya realizes both what it was that compelled him to acquire the letter and why he deliberated in reading it. The people the letter refers to - both the writer, Touko, and the reader, himself - no longer exist. Every ‘you’ written, Byakuya knows refers to ‘him’, but it is not ‘him’ that reads it.

The teenagers who attended Hopes Peak together were erased. Years of their lives spent living under the same school’s roof, wiped to a clean slate. To instead experience the Killing Game, and to go on into adulthood as people hastily adapted to a life of competition and murder. The Byakuya who not only came to know Touko, but became inundated with presence as the letter describes no longer exists.

Suddenly, Byakuya feels old. Like a mind too old for its body, or a body too old for its mind. He knows that he saw the world differently, then. He’s changed - stronger, smarter, more better suited to this new, destroyed world. And in many ways not simply measured in terms of 'strength'. So have his former classmates. They’d all grown - even Touko. Perhaps especially Touko. Had she not, Byakuya would likely still be trapped within Towa City, or worse.

Byakuya exhales. He rereads the last section of the letter. It feels more infantile the second time through, but it resonates through him still, as if a ghostly hand being ran through his chest.

**Author's Note:**

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAF9Fzk_kdc


End file.
